


Bioluminescence

by sappho_e



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: (I Just Like Anatomy), (not sexual), Angst, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Bad Dreams, Bad Italian, Bone Imagery, Character Study, Depression, Fluff, M/M, Will Being A Good Boyfriend, apollo - Freeform, prose, solangelo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 04:03:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18792601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sappho_e/pseuds/sappho_e
Summary: Nico knew he shouldn’t be surprised at anything Fate threw at him anymore.He had risen skeletons as his tears fell when he was ten years old, and he had shaken like he was falling apart. He’d seen gods rise and fall and ghosts and monsters around every corner.He’d been to Hell and back so many times he was resigned to the foot traffic of the damned, and he was almost certain that the void that hollowed him out inside could never be filled.But Will… Will was different.Even in his life full of horror and darkness, he had found Will and that was the biggest blessing the gods had ever given him.xxxxxxxxxNico is shaken after a bad dream, but Will knows how to calm him down.





	Bioluminescence

**Author's Note:**

> Very self-indulgent whoops, with the main headcanon that as a side-effect of Will's Apollo powers he can glow (mandatory moth/lamp joke here)   
> I might make a story on Will's powers and just some plain Solangelo but I just wanted to post this, after a while of nothing after You make flowers grow in my lungs. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy and please leave a kudos or comment if you did!

Nico is standing in front of another crack in the earth, so deep he can hear the rumbles of Tartarus deep in his bones.

He’s shaking so hard he feels like he’s falling apart, his heart pounding against his sternum so hard he can feel it in his fingers.

Bianca stands on the other side of the fissure, her head tilted up and away at him. He follows her gaze, and sees the moon looms low in the sky, illuminating his older sister’s soft face.

“Bianca?” He calls, and his teeth are clacking together so hard he can barely get the words out.

She turns to him, her hands deep in the pockets of her coat and her green hat is tilted at such an angle it looks like it’s about to fall off.

“Nico.” She smiles and Nico falls to his knees, completely unable to keep himself up. His sword is in the dust and the crack yawns open further, the endless black that hovers at the periphery of his vision.

“I’m sorry Bianca,” he says, it’s what he tells her each time he dreams of her. Each time she ignores him.

“My Nico.” She holds her hands out like she used to, when they crossed roads, or when he was tired or when she protected him.

Nico tried to stand up, to go to her side but his legs are too weak.

“Nico, _mio fratello_.” She takes a step towards him, not even glancing at the chasm between him.

His eyes fill with tears and he tries reaching for her like he’s ten years old again.

“I’m scared Bianca.” He whispers and she takes another step. His fear shifts, anxiety reaching to new limits and he shakes his head.

“Bianca, the hole, you can’t cross it.” He says urgently and the smile on her face doesn’t falter.

“Don’t be scared, Nico.” She tells him and takes one last fatal step.

Nico tries to reach her, but the chasm is so wide he isn’t even close to catching her hand, let alone saving her.

“Bianca!” he screams, tears falling thick and fast down his cheeks. The last he sees of his sister is her upturned face and her arms still reaching to him… no not to him to the night sky and the stars.

Her eyes reflect the moon and its cold depths and Nico has never hated the Gods more.

 

“Nico?” Another voice is carried along on the wind and Nico is still in the dirt, staring at the void.

“Neeks?” he sounds like when he comes to the Hades cabin in the morning with snacks and water and reminders to get showered and dressed.

“Will?” he asks finally, turning around numbly. Will stands before him but he isn’t the vibrant alive Will Nico knows.

The skeleton before him wears Will’s camp T-shirt and his necklace and has his sword around his hips but the grinning bone face is sickening. His shirt is ripped and bloodied and Nico’s heart aches.

“Oh Nico, it happens every time.” Will says in his lilting way and his jaws unhinges and snaps closed with the words.

“You ruin it, you do.” Will sounds stupidly earnest like when he’s pleading with Nico to stay in the infirmary just a few more hours, to take just a bit more ambrosia.

“I don’t want to die Neeks but what else can happen at the side of the Son of Death?” Will laughs and reaches for him. Nico tries to scramble back but he can feel the void as palpable as a raging fire at his back.

He doesn’t want to be void anymore, he doesn’t want to be empty.

He wants to be alive he wants to be happy he wants to be with Will and Bianca and all his friends.

Will’s skeletal hand—distal, intermediate, proximal phalanges, the bones that stack the paths Nico wanders— combing through his hair and tracing his wet cheeks.

“Nico, Nico, _mia lune_ , you kill everything you touch!” Will waves his free hand at him, wriggles a finger through his own ribs, pokes at his own eye sockets. His hand slips up his own shirt and through the tear over the chest (that’s a killing blow, is that how Will dies? Too busy healing everyone else to care for himself?) Nico can see his fist curl and stretch in the mockery of a beating heart.

“Nico, Nico, I want to live. You’ll kill me, you’ll be my death.” Will sing-songs like they’re at the campfire, and Nico can’t help it, he leans into Will’s hand, his chin tucked against carpals and metacarpals.

“I’m sorry Will.” he whispers.

The wind picks up and Will is whistling the song he sings when it plays on the infirmary radio, the breeze singing through his vertebrae.

“Oh, Nico it’s coming apart.” Will whispers, and crouches in front of him. Nico stares into his empty eye sockets –void more void he wants to be full he wants to be ALIVE—and Will’s hands spread over his chest, feels the heartbeat thumping behind the skin.

“Nico, you have life. I’ll die but you’ll live. I’m sorry _mia luna_.”

Will’s skeletal hands push him hard and Nico can’t even manage a scream before he’s falling down into the darkness.

He’s sick of the void.

 

* * *

 

 

Nico wakes up panting and heaving and gripping at the hands that hover at his chest.

“Will! Will! I’m sorry I’m sorry!” he finds himself saying in terror, and he can still feel that freefall at the back of his mind.

“Nico! _Mia luna_ , I‘m here!” Nico blinks tears away to find his boyfriend leaning over him with his hair a mess and his red mouth parted in surprise.

“You’re Nico di Angelo. You’re in the Hades cabin. You’re at camp. You’re with me. You’re safe.”  Will starts counting down the list to stave off the panic attack as Nico clutches to his (warm soft alive) arms and chest.

“It’s so dark, Will it’s so dark.” Nico whimpers and there’s no part of him left to even protest to the spilling of his feelings. Those parts are lost in the void.

Will continues hushing him and whispering softly to him, and Nico can’t even really make out the words, he could be reading his anatomy textbook glossary to him and he wouldn’t care. He can just hear the slow lilt of Will’s voice and the beat of his heart through his chest and his breath ruffling his hair and that’s all he wants. It’s all he needs.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Will says, some time later, his fingers stroking spirals on Nico’s back. Nico thinks of Will’s bleached skull and Bianca’s lunar lost eyes and shakes his head.

Will hums gently and leans his head down to press his lips against Nico’s hair. Nico’s eyes are still wet, and he scrunches them closed to prevent himself slipping anymore.

“You can tell me, you know. I’m not going to laugh or leave. I want you to be okay.”

Will always did have an uncanny understanding of what Nico was really thinking. Even so, he shakes his head, slowly drawing his feelings back into himself so he doesn’t burden Will anymore than he already does. He tucks his nose deep into the crook of Will’s neck and his lips flutter against Will’s clavicle, eyes finally drying into a sleep-sticky mess.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s a little while later when Nico speaks again and even then, it’s just a hushed utterance of the other boy’s name.

“Will?” Nico asks and he’s so, so sleepy now but he blinks blearily at Will, lifting his head away from the other boy’s chest. He’s not entirely sure if he’s dreaming or not anymore.

“Are you glowing?” He murmurs, a smile curling his lips at the bizarreness of the question and Will raises a bioluminescent hand and his eyes, like suns, widened and brighten.

“I guess I am,” he says calmly, trailing his hands through the air to see the trace left behind like fireflies.

“That’s cool,” Nico says, his eyes watching his, apparently glowing, boyfriend. He was almost too tired to be really surprised.

“I love you.” Will tells him and when Nico closes his eyes and leans into his collarbone he can see Will’s light behind his eyelids and for the first time in a very, very long time, his mind is not void.

“I love you too.” Nico whispers, meaning every single word. His lips trace Will’s neck, feeling the other boy’s heartbeat beat against his own ribcage. They’re wound around each other, chest to chest, sternum to sternum and Nico is safe and alive.

‘’Mi sole.’’


End file.
